Transportation Board prepares to write report on the sinking of the Queen of the North

Next week the team involved in the investigation into the sinking of the Queen of the North will begin its report phase of the investigation. Having interviewed the crew, utilized a submersible for further investigation and examined the procedures in place at B C Ferries, all in a bid to put together a comprehensive report on the tragedy.

The reports normally take over a year to reach their conclusions and recommendations, but the Team members are hoping to expedite that process as much as they can. They hope to have a first draft ready by September, with further refinements to follow with board reviews and editing. However, they are striving to provide a report for the public ahead of schedule.

The Times-Colonist of Victoria has the full details on the story below.

It's full-speed ahead for sunken ferry report
Investigators to 'break mould' and start writing this week
Cindy E. Harnett, CanWest News Service
Published: Sunday, July 09, 2006

Transportation Safety Board investigators probing Queen of the North's spectacular sinking are hoping to issue their highly anticipated report ahead of schedule. They plan to start writing it on Monday.

"That's the plan to expedite it," safety board lead investigator Capt. Raymond Mathew said. He hopes to complete the first draft of the report by September, with board reviews and editing to follow.

"We just want to set a precedent here and get on with it," Mathew said.

Queen of the North, travelling from Prince Repeat to Port Hardy, rammed into Gill Island and sank about 75 minutes later on March 22. The vessel now rests 400 metres below, on the ocean floor. There were 101 people on board the passenger ferry, 42 of them crew. Two passengers disappeared and are presumed to have died.

Some of the safety board's previous reports have been written within six months. They don't assign blame, instead pointing out safety lessons to be learned. But the majority take at least a year, if not much longer, to be produced.

Queen of the North investigators want to "break that mould," Mathew said.
This weekend, the Vancouver-based team is returning from a week of meetings in Ottawa where it shared and reviewed its findings.

Mathew said the board's 90-day report to Ottawa officials was delayed by a "worthy" decision to hire an unmanned submersible vehicle to extract the electronic chart system's hard drive from Queen of the North, as well as taking photographs and video illustrating the ferry's bridge controls and the direction of the two steering switches in the wheelhouse.

"It was a successful dive, that's all I can say," Mathew said.

Members of the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility operating Ropos, the submersible, also retrieved the ferry's global positioning system and the automatic identification system, a computer chip that records course, speed, longitude and latitude.

Investigators could have written a sound report without the dive, Mathew said, but having more information has proved valuable.

Examination of the equipment is just one part of the investigation, Mathew said.
"There are other issues we are looking at -- training and familiarization and how things are set up. There are all kinds of different things we look at as a whole."

Bridge resource management is also a focus, he said.

There were two crew members on the bridge at the time it hit Gil Island -- a junior officer, a man in his 50s with more than 10 years experience, and a helmswoman, in her 40s, also with considerable experience.

A helmsperson takes direction from one of the bridge officers. On the night of the crash, Queen of the North's senior officer was at dinner and the captain was sleeping.

Shaken and traumatized, crew were interviewed hours after the sinking by Transportation Safety Board investigators in Prince Rupert. All of the testimony is confidential and is not shared with the RCMP or any other investigating body.

For days, the crew explained in detail what they knew of the events leading up to the accident. Two crew members, one of whom was on the bridge at the time of the crash, have refused to take part in B.C. Ferries' internal investigation.

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2006